


Fruitless

by myswordfishmind



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 19:11:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/613269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myswordfishmind/pseuds/myswordfishmind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Sherlock's death there is decay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fruitless

The flat is not silent. Outside, there is the hum of traffic, and of life passing by. Downstairs, Mrs. Hudson’s TV is on, a faint, static blare. Everything is as it was. Normal. Still. Fossilized.

John thinks about what his therapist asked of him. What would he tell Sherlock, if he could? Were there moments in his life designed for that, moments he missed, things he should regret? Was there anything left inside John that Sherlock had not discovered, that had needed tongue and phonemes to be understood? Does friendship, or love, or need, necessitate sound, when action has always been enough?

John traces paths through the rooms. The fridge has been turned off, and is warm and dark and empty. The bag of soil Sherlock and John had collected on a rainy Tuesday months ago has been removed, leaving a blank space between the canned food. Sherlock's bed is still unmade and untouched, but it is cold, and it is lifeless.

John collects a sample of dust from below the mirror, brushing it into a glass slide. He takes it to Sherlock's microscope, adjusting the lens into focus. He finds the skin cells from between everything else. Some are his. Some are Sherlock's. They lie there, side by side, on top of each other, resting in their decay. They touch like Sherlock and John will never touch again, never be a pair again. John’s hands tighten around the microscope, so much coarser, clumsier, than Sherlock's had been, so pale and long and graceful looking when they hovered around the apparatus. John stumbles back from the table. Sherlock's presence, his memory, his ghost, it is radioactive, a half-life that has run out, leaving only disease, leaving only loss and disbelief. John tries to take a breath, but the flat, all it held, once, is suddenly corrosive, and erodes the oxygen away, leaving only rust to breathe. The loss is a horror, it is unimaginable, impossible to express in its intangibility. The image of slaughtered tress in a forest, the fires that burn bridges and cities, the waves that wash flora, that wash fauna, away, leaving everything to taste of salt, the way John’s lips taste, now, in this moment, a rain intended to heal wounds, but that leaves them stinging and bitter. John clutches his head, trying to contain himself, but what is inside him that can be contained? It is not there, it is not in his liver and his lungs, not even in his heart; it is everywhere, outside on the streets and inside buildings. Not in the shadows, but in the light, an open-casket truth.

Sherlock Holmes is dead.

John kneels on the floor, where the dust has made its home. He is alone now. _Alone._

John closes his eyes and di

              sin

  te

                            grate

     s


End file.
